New Portastatic Stream: “Trajectory”

Superchunk leader Mac McCaughan talks about this tune off his project's latest release, the career-spanning collection Some Small History.

Mac McCaughan may be best recognized as the leader of indie pioneer Superchuck (watch live video!), but with his solo project Portastatic, the Chapel Hill, NC, native and Merge Records founder explores territory outside the fuzzy, loose jangle most have come to know from that band. And though Some Small History, a 44-track collection of B-sides, rarities, demos, and unreleased songs from across Portastatic’s 16-year career (out Sept. 9), explores the breadth of McCaughan’s creativity, it’s “Trajectory,” a fast-paced, brash guitar-popper, that hits hardest.

“Like a lot of Portastatic songs it’s about travel and distance, stress and alienation,” McCaughan tells SPIN.com of the tune. “I recorded a demo of ‘Trajectory’ for the Bright Ideas album, and on the demo the acoustic guitars were really distorted, so we tried to recreate that with the full band when we did this version. It’s more punk rock than the rest of that album [Bright Ideas] ended up being, so it didn’t make it to the record.” Thankfully this time around, “Trajectory,” in all its forward-motion, pop-punk glory, made the cut.